Monday, November 9, 2009

I recently was a guest of FOX and Friends and The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and when I made the statement that Fort Hood shooter Major Nidal Malik Hasan was not a terrorist, but a psychopathic mass murderer in midlife crisis, I got some angry email.

Ms. Brown...I just saw your appearance on Fox an Friends....and was blown away at your disregard that Islam played no part in this massacre.Have you done even a 5 minute search on this person? Wake up lady. Do a little research before you make a fool of yourself on national TV again.

Dorothy Rabinowitz woud agree with this emailer that I am either a fool or I am in fear of being politically incorrect.

To those not terrorized by fear of offending Muslim sensitivities, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's motive was instantly clear: It was an act of terrorism by a man with a record of expressing virulent, anti-American, pro-jihadist sentiments. All were conspicuous signs of danger his Army superiors chose to ignore.

But I will stand my ground and I hope, for the sake of true understanding people will understand my thinking. Anyone who has seen me speak on television or has read my blogs will know I have never worried about being politically correct. I aim to speak the truth as I see it.

First of all, we must define "terrorist." Under the United States Law Code: the term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents; the term “terrorist group” means any group, or which has significant subgroups which practice, international terrorism.

By this definition, Hasan does not even begin to qualify as a terrorist.

1) He was not a member of a terrorist group. Yes, he may have listened to what a terrorist group had to say, he may have been in the vicinity of another who might have been a member of a terrorist group, and he may have emailed a terrorist group. He might have even chatted with terrorists on the Internet in a chat room. But, none of these behaviors make him a member of a terrorist group any more than a psychopath a church member because he has gone to a Sunday service a few times and chatted with a pastor online.

2) He was not carrying out any mission organized by a terrorist group. He was a lone gunman.

3) He was not politically motivated. "What?" you say? The guy was spouting Islamic jihadist garbage before and during the shooting. This is very true but that what he says is not necessarily his motive. Like all midlife crisis psychopathic mass murderers, he must justify his rage at society for his failure; Hasan has decided to portray himself as a good Muslim conducting jihad and thereby casting himself as a hero and not a loser scumbag who kills his coworkers because he is ticked he is failing in his professional and personal life. He is no different than Jason Rodriguez, the man who attempted the mass murder of his coworkers in Orlando, Florida the following day; he was disgruntled and angry and wanted to show everyone he wasn't a weakling they could kick around any more.

I know what a terrorist attack looks like. My son was in Jaipur the very day the LeT (Pakistan's terrorist organization, Lashkar-e-Taiba) hit the tourist area with bombs attached to bicycles. Eighty people were killed. Thankfully, my son didn't listen to his mother who told him to go to that very area that day to sightsee before he started work the next day. Instead, he was watching videos in his room while the bombs blew up the city center.

I have traveled to India and been at the very spots that terrorists have hit. I was in Connought Place in Delhi, in front of the Taj Hotel in Mumbai, and in the shoppiing area in Hyderabad, all locations that were targeted by terrorist groups who successfully carried out their missions.. Each one was a concerted effort by a Islamic extremist terrorist organizations, either LeT out of Pakistan's Kashmir region or HuJI (Harkat ul-Jihad-al-Islami) out of Bangladesh.

Hasan belonged to no group. He may have self-radicalized himself in violent Islamic ideology but he still was not part of an organized terrorist cell. He was an angry man, who happened to be Muslim, who took out his bitterness on his fellow soldiers.

Now, was there a problem with failure on the army's part to identify Hasan as a threat? You bet there was. He was clearly decompensating, falling apart, being more and more angry and bizarre. His increasingly concerning rantings supporting suicide bombers and growing pro-Islamic jihadist sympathies should have been a huge warning sign that he might go off and do what he did. It was at this stage that fear of being politcally incorrect cost lives. The Army should have booted Hasan because he was a danger to his fellow soldiers whether or not he was a Muslim.

Clearly American needs to be vigilant in fighting terrorism and preventing and dismantling terrorist cells in this country. We need to do something about people entering our country who despise it and its people. We need to stop those of any religion who encourage and condone violence against our citizens. And if Major Hasan had been the member of a terrorist cell and been their "soldier" and not ours, I would not hesitate to state we had a Muslim perpetrating a terrorist attack against America.

But unless more information comes in linking this sorry excuse for a human being to a terrorist group, we still have a lone psychopath pretending he was a terrorist so he could get his day in the sun.

7 comments:

And you are no friend of those who are left of center politically either. You have unfortunately run afoul of the folks who know the "truth has a well known liberal bias." I'm not sure that political correctness was the entire issue. If the Army had been un-PC and discharged him it would have probably just fueled his anger further and reinforced his belief he was being persecuted. Rather than shoot up an Army base it might have been a Wal-Mart. Do you think a psychological intervention would have helped or was he inevitably going to lose it regardless?

California Girl, you are absolutely right. A psychopath will use one thing or the other to justify (in his own mind which is the only one that counts to him) that he has the right to do what he does.

Inspector Winship, no, I don't think psychological intervention would have helped because he is a psychopath and nothing works with them except incarceration or fear of incarceration. You make a good point about the fact the army could have thrown him out and he could have gone and shot up a Walmart or a church or any place with a bunch of people he felt deserved death. Rodrigguez, the Orlando shooter WAS fired and he came back and offed everyone anyway. It is a very tricky thing when doing risk assessment to come up with something that actually works because it really is hard to know the mind of a psychopath. Will it make him madder or will he give up? What to do is often a gamble and when the psychopath goes and commits murder, we always think we made the wrong choice (when, in fact, he might have killed no matter what one did about him).

The army couldn't necessarily prevent the mass murder from happening somewhere at some point, but the fact they kept Hasan in their ranks even though he was creeping people out is something that needs to be examined.

I encourage you all to connect to the link above at newsbusters which you will give you an argument against what I stated in this post. You can also read the emails I wrote in an exchange to further explain my viewpoint. However, it was clear I was being baited and so I ended the conversation and will see that instead of simply making whatever points supported his argument, the author of that article attacked the messenger instead. The comments afterward are amusing as I am labeled a big leftist and liberal which is pretty funny considering how conservative I am in my political viewpoints.

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By Pat Brown

"Killing for Sport is the most valuable insight into the minds of serial killers that you will ever read. While other profilers tend to conceal the clear facts behind complex technical language and psychobabble. Pat Brown actually tells it like it is."